Contributors

CÉCILIA BRACMORT (Montréal, Canada)
Originally from Creil, France, Cécilia Bracmort completed a master’s in Cultural Mediation and Communication (Paris III- Sorbonne-Nouvelle) as well as a licence in Philosophy of Art (Paris I – Pantheon Sorbonne) in France. Bracmort has finalized in 2013 her academic profile with a B.A. in Fine Arts at Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke. Her interests in visual arts leads her to focus on curating and photography. She is now working on curatorial projects addressing on questions of normality.

Cécilia Bracmort’s article:

Review: Dora García, Of Crimes and Dreams or the infinite power of human mind
Posted on 1 September 2014

Of Crimes and Dreams strips the threshold between reality and fantasy where the two worlds interpenetrate and nourish each other. Upon entering Dora Garcí­a’s exhibition curated by Chantal Pontbriand, one figuratively experiences a journey into the human psyche and all its complex richness, sequences of altered states and perceptions from waking life to unconsciousness, assisted by Garcí­a’s use of Finnegans Wake, James Joyce’s last and most experimental novel.[…]
 

Review: Playlist – A Collection of Collectors at galerie antoine ertaskiran, Montréal
Posted on 19 July 2014

On June 14th, galerie antoine ertaskiran opened its self-curated summer exhibition, Playlist, featuring five Montreal-based individual and collective artists. The show brings together a varied selection of techniques, styles and even experiences – from mid-career professionals to promising art students – to realize a striking layout of artists-collectors, using processes of collage and assemblage to accurately reflect the title of this show.[…]
 


JOSEPH HENRY (Montréal, Canada)
Joseph Henry is a PhD student in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center. He’s published in venues such as ArtInfo Canada, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer Logger, The New Inquiry, and esse, and worked at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Joseph Henry’s article:

Review: Colleen Heslin “Ballads from the North Sea” at Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montréal
Posted on 10 June 2014

On the crowded fourth-floor of the Whitney Biennial, a floor curated this year by Stuart Comer, American artist Ken Okiishi brought painting into contact with the galleries’ propensity toward new and electronic media. For his contribution to the Biennial, a major exhibition designed to showcase recent American art, Okiishi painted over consumer-grade television monitors, obscuring their moving images with messy acrylic. If perhaps blunt in its multimedial comparison, Okiishi’s work symbolized a relatively new place for painting after its perennially announced death by Paul Delaroche in 1839, and countless others since. In a digital visual culture dominated by screen technologies and their perceptual flatness, painting has been revived as a key medium in the investigation of the surfaces and places from which images are produced and consumed. […]

Essay: Sex in Public – Streetview and Vincent Chevalier’s PWIF’d at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Posted on 1 July 2013

Montreal-based Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has devoted roughly a year of programming (from November 2012 to March 2013) to an extensive curatorial investigation of the city’s cultural life and multi-faceted urban structure. With its three-part exhibition ABC : MTL, the CCA announced an open call for submissions, to nourish a diverse presentation of objects ranging from Robin Pindea Gould and Fiona Annis’ rigorous documentation of Montreal bridges to the architectural renderings of the Centre du Soccer, in the neighborhood of Saint-Michel. […]
 


JESSICA KIRSH (Montréal, Canada)
Jessica Kirsh is a writer based in Montreal. She is currently completing her Master’s degree in art history at Concordia University.Her research is focused on new media, and issues of participation and spectatorship in interactive art. She has also been involved in gallery curation, both in Montreal and Toronto.

Jessica Kirsh’s article:

In all seriousness – Interview with the artist Rachel Shaw
Posted on 26 April 2014

Montreal based artist Rachel Shaw’s solo exhibition is currently on view at Galerie LOCK, showcasing her new series “All Seriousness”: a sequence of sterile, yet comically uplifting interiors. These waiting areas, offices, and living rooms have no visible entrance or exit; only black squares that lead to nowhere. Devoid of human presence, the furniture and objects no longer serve any utilitarian function and instead engage in aesthetic conversations with the viewers. The shadows, angles and intersections are only slightly off, lending to a peculiar unease on the part of the spectator. Caught in a state of in-betweenness, we can’t help but ask: where did everybody go? Shaw discusses her work with Jessica Kirsh.[…]
 


ADAM GILL (Glasgow, UK)
Adam Gill is a writer currently based in Glasgow.

Adam Gill’s article:

Review: Aidan Pontarini – The Ambivalent Spaces of Abjection
Posted on 1 February 2014

In the Powers of Horror: An Essay On Abjection, psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva notes that in death the corpse, once a lived and expelling body, has itself become expelled from language or the symbolic. No longer possessing the capacity to signify coherent identity as an “I”, the corpse presents a threat to notions of stable subjectivity within a system of signification and social relations where such stability is consistently reinforced. One may consider the title of Montreal based artist Aidan Pontarini’s solo exhibition at Galerie LOCK, Death is Short, Life is Long, with this in mind as it not only touches on abjection at the level of the corpse as object, as thematic device, but as a continually operating condition of the lived subject, haunting its presumed sense of togetherness. Consisting of paintings, drawings and one sculpture, Death is Short, Life is Long offers the visitor a collection of abject imagery in terms of content, the liminal “shit” at the threshold of what is socially acceptable, that which we expel but is also part of us, the repressed but inevitably present.[…]
 


MARIE ROUX (London, UK)
Marie Roux is London based photographer and writer originally from Nice, France. Roux holds MA in Photography at London College of Communications and BA in Fine Art New Media at Chelsea College of Art. She has written for several publications as well as online magazine London Essence. Roux has also documenting events at Café Oto, London’s cutting edge venue for the last three years. marieroux.info

Marie Roux’s article:

Slide Show: Frieze Projects, Sculpture Park, Frieze Masters 2013
Posted on 25 October 2013

Slide Show: Frieze London 2013
Posted on 24 October 2013

Frieze London & Masters 2013
Posted on 23 October 2013

Frieze 11th edition closed its door last Sunday night, accompanied for the second time running by the more luxurious Frieze Masters tent, a short 10 minutes walk on the other side of Regent’s park. This year 30 countries were represented at Frieze and 15 at Masters, turning this fair into their most international event to date. Amongst the noticeable changes in 2013 was the strong attendance of galleries from South America, especially Argentina and Brasil. Dubai also gained more exposure as well as spaces from Brussels, Berlin and London, while North American galleries still boasted visible signs of expansion. […]

Art Marathon: Frieze Art Fair 2012 [Slide Show]
Posted on 19 October 2012

Frieze Art Fair 2012 report: From blind dates to inspiring masters
Posted on 18 October 2012

The 10th edition of Frieze art fair closed its doors on Sunday night, comprising this year of two tents on opposite side of Regent’s Park. Frieze 2012 gathered 175 galleries from 35 countries surrounded by outside artworks selected this year by Yorkshire Sculpture Park director Clare Lilley. Frieze Masters showcased 79 galleries with works ranging from antiquity, Renaissance masters through to 20th century art. The veritable feast for the eyes offered an escape from the frenzy of the contemporary art tent across the park.[…]
 


HANA SAKUMA (Kobe, Japan)
Hana Sakuma was born in Japan in 1970. Based in London between 1993 and 2010, she currently lives in Kobe and works at Kobe Design University, Japan. She holds a PhD at Chelsea College of Art & Design and a MFA in Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art in London. She works as an artist, researcher and art writer.

Hana Sakuma’s article:

Focus Japan part II: An Uncertain Future- Art after the Great East Japan Earthquake
Posted on 2 August 2011

The art scene in Japan has been changing dramatically since the recent chain of catastrophic events – the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant meltdown – which filled news networks around the world. These particularly devastated the Tohoku area, the seacoast areas of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, five national heritage sites were affected, such as the Zuigan-ji Temple in the Miyagi Prefecture, as well as damaging 143 important cultural properties.[…]
 


YAM LAU (Toronto, Canada)
Yam Lau was born in Hong Kong and received an MFA from the University of Alberta. Now based in Toronto, Lau has exhibited his work widely in Canada, USA, Europe and China. He is associate professor of painting at York University, Toronto, and is a co-founder of the community based art project “Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art” in Beijing, China. Lau writes about art and design regularly. yamlau.com

Yam Lau’s article:

Conversation on “Sediment” – an exhibition of artist’s bookwork and book support or an exercise in exhibition arrangement?
Posted on 22 February 2012

Yam Lau [YL]: I would like to begin by giving some context for this interview on the exhibition at G Gallery, Toronto entitled, Sediment. I’m Yam Lau, one of the artists in the exhibition and I’m sitting in the gallery with Shane Krepakevich and Michelle McGeean, the two curators of the exhibition. Because I spent a few days setting up my piece in the exhibition, I saw how the exhibition was put together, how the whole thing unfolds. For this reason I think I have a different perspective from the other artists who only discovered the show and in particular the way their work was treated at the opening. […]
 


YANIYA LEE (Montréal, Canada)
Yaniya Lee is an arts writer based in Montréal. She received BAS in English literature at Concordia University in Montréal. She writes for Montréal Mirror. Lee is currently working on her project compiling an oral history of Montréal in the 90’s. yaniyalee.com

Yaniya Lee’s article:

Review: Shilpa Gupta – Will we ever be able to mark enough?
Posted on 28 November 2011

In a rapidly globalizing world, intensified human migrations have brought issues of identity, culture and homeland to the forefront of many’s political agenda, and with them the fears and insecurities of change. Shilpa Gupta’s exhibition Will we ever be able to mark enough? at Darling Foundry sharply addresses some of our most recurrent anxieties for the issues above, particularly regarding border security. The Mumbai artist worked in collaboration with Montreal curator Renée Baert to present her first Canadian solo show, a selection of recent pieces as well as pivotal new works, created specifically for this show. […]

Review: Richard Serra “Junction/Cycle”
Posted on 16 November 2011

Richard Serra has filled Gagosian’s 2500 square foot New York Gallery with two recent monumental works for his current show “Junction/Cycle”. Both “Junction” (2011) and “Cycle” (2010) are winding compositions of 13 foot tall curved and leaning slabs of weatherproof steel. Together, they transform the vast gallery into a maze of corridors, hidden clearings and unexpected exits. […]

Review: The Fox
Posted on 11 September 2011

In 1924 began a romantic liaison between 35-year-old husband, father and Marburg University philosophy teacher >Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt, his 18 year-old student. By 1933, Heidegger had joined the Nazi Party and Arendt, a jew, fled to France to escape religious persecution. Utilizing these accounts and more as premise, G Gallery in Toronto exhibited last month the work of four artists. Oskar Hüber, Yam Lau, Sophie Nys and Kevin Rodgers sparsely filled the brightly lit white space of G Gallery with emblematic objects, videos and installation works. […]

Review: With the Void
Posted on 26 August 2011

“We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.” * This month Diaz Contemporary adorned its walls with works that, at first glance, echo ghostly epitaphs from the glorious manifestos of American abstract painters. On closer inspection the three-person show, made up of Stephen Andrews, Pierre Dorion and Dara Gellman, rises beyond the oppositions between figurative and non, into velvety sensory aesthetics. […]

Review: Pierrick Sorin “Une vie bien remplie”
Posted on 18 August 2011

Une Vie Bien Remplie is a collection of works by French videographer Pierrick Sorin, currently at the Darling Foundry. The six pieces on show form a comprehensive twenty-year overview of the artist’s career, spanning most of his thematic realm. Sorin reaches high levels of self-contemplation with each of his films and videos in order to subvert his own artistic relevance and project the buoyancy of his humor, which fluctuates between subtlety and satire. […]

Review: Showing Stuff in a Big Room
Posted on 9 August 2011

Mathieu Lefevre at Galerie Division is effectively “Showing Stuff in a Big Room”. Whereas unpretentious exhibition titles often suggest modesty in the artist, Lefevre is putting some big cards on the table, playing against the plausibly inescapable boundaries of conceptual art. This show claims a much wider appeal than the usual art world’s initiated few, fighting conceptual dreariness with the weapon of humor. […]

Review: Sculpture – Ludisme
Posted on 21 July 2011

Derived from the Latin verb ludere, to play, Galerie Sas has appropriately titled its current exhibition of three-dimensional works. Sculpture-Ludisme assembles art pieces by Patrick Bérubé, Catherine Bolduc, Éric Cardinal, Laurent Craste, Marc Dulude, Peter Gnass, Fred Laforge and Karine Payette in this playful, surreal and wildly chromatic show that comfortably straddles the line between serious and over-the-top. While all the works genuinely represent the approach of each artist, overall this show is delightfully coherent. […]


 

2 Replies to “Contributors”

  1. Bonjour,

    I work as communication agent for the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-St-Paul. I found you website by searching in the last press review and discovered that you had done an article on the 29th Symposium. May I have a email adress so I can send you informations on our activities?

    Thank you! Have a very nice day!

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